DOCTOR? NO

The rumpus about pitch doctoring at the Oval has often been accompanied by a retort that Australia best not complain because we've been doctoring pitches for years:

It’s not the sort of thing we do, is it? I mean, preparing a pitch in England to suit the home team. Aren’t we above that sort of thing? Spirit of the game and what-not? We leave that sort of chicanery to Asian chaps – and to Australians, who have all too often provided Shane Warne with a raging turner in Sydney.

~~ Scyld Berry

Incidentally, just in case you confused that Scyld Berry with all the other Scyld Berrys who write about cricket, he's the same Scyld Berry who wrote last year:

India's success gives England hope for Ashes

In planning their strategy for 2009, England need to think about slow, turning pitches, negating Australia's advantage in pure pace and playing to their own strengths of swing and left-arm spin.

And then there's this:

Pot, kettle, Shane Warne

I heard Shane Warne going on about the Oval pitch again today. He had changed his position slightly from “He (the curator) overbaked it a little bit to make sure there is a result” to “looks a little worn”. I wonder if the mellowing of his position is because someone pointed out that Warne himself had custom made, specially prepared wickets in Australia for a DECADE AND A HALF. Pitches that became raging turners and that looked like a tank battle had taken place within two naffing days. Talk about being hypocritical....

Australia doctoring pitches is an accusation I categorically reject.

The Gabba, Adelaide Oval and Bellerive have been the same for as long as I can remember.

The Gabba, in particular, is a cricket pundit's dream: lively to start, a good batting track for a couple of days, spin friendly to finish.

Adelaide Oval is a batting paradise for four day matches, but the fifth day of Adelaide Tests is often the best day's cricket each summer.

It's a toss-up (with any luck it's not Ricky Ponting's call) whether the Gabba or Adelaide Oval are the best Test wickets in world cricket.

Bellerive has not hosted too many Tests, but while it's generally bat-friendly, it's never comes close to being anything other than a solid cricket wicket.

Sydney is certainly spin friendly, although less so in recent years. But it has has always been the same: good to bat on, then deteriorating by late on the fourth day and into the fifth day.

Melbourne was a fiasco in the late seventies and early eighties, but that wasn't by design, it was courtesy of poor management. Once the ground had been renovated and the drop-in pitches properly matured, Melbourne decks have been solid, if slightly slow and low wickets.

Perth was traditionally a hard, fast track, a speed merchant's paradise. If anything, it was made to order for the West Indies, who won there in 1975, 1984, 1988, 1993 and 1997. Perth is now the let-down track of the summer.

The point is, Australian pitches during my cricket watching lifetime, make up the best set of cricket wickets in the world, and it's been that way since at least 1970.

Not once do I remember a curator changing a wicket to suit a given set of circumstances.

The only change is that CricAussie and Channel Nine have demanded roads that last at least four days so that matches are guaranteed to go into the fifth day.

There is about as much chance of the Australian cricket heavy-hitters demanding a minefield as there is of me being selected to replace Klutz Haddin behind the poles.

Comments

[Matt]

Absolutely agree. The defenders of the ECBs actions are again reaching for the "you do it too!" defence to soothe their guilty conscience. They same people made the same defence of Strauss's pantomime at the end of the Cardiff Test. They were wrong on both accounts and of course never provide a specific example, merely hand waving generalities.

Pitch doctoring in county cricket is rife and the groundsmen there are masters of the dark art. It is a tried and true method of winning matches for England, think 1956 Old Trafford and 1972 Headingley.

The only Aust. example I can think of is Melbourne in 54/55 which backfired and the controversy afterwards saw the Sec. of the MCC (Ransford I think) resign soon after.

[dave]

Well said. Adelaide was a bit of a road for a while but Les Burdett may hold a record for the most fifth-day results in the past twenty years.

Sydney was a raging turner for years before Warne. Hell, AB picked up, what was it, a seven-for there?

[m0nty]

What would have been the point of preparing raging turners for Warnie? He turned it on anything. What he thrived on was bounce, which most Australian pitches always had in abundance.

He didn't actually bowl very well on the SCG, I think you'll find, especially against England. 63 wickets from 13 Tests at 26.7 is no great shakes, including three Tests against England with match analyses of 1/136 (McDermott and Fleming 5, May 0 wickets), 2/110 (McGill 12, McGrath/Miller 3) and 2/92 (Lee/McGrath 6, Clark 5).

There, Scyld has been scolded.

[The Mongrel]

The idea that the SCG was curated to suit Warne is laughable.

The SCG has always taken spin.

In the dark days of the eighties, when the Windies would spank us without raising a sweat, the SCG was the only ground we could rely on for a face saving win.

Anyone remember Dutchy Holland and Murray Bennett?

[Adsy]

Then Mo, then Peter Taylor, then Peter Sleep, then Peter McIntyre, then SKW. Having gone through MacGill, White, Krezja, Casson, McGain and Hauritz since Warney, we are about due for another gun?

Mark my words this summer.... Jon Holland from Victoria. Play the kids.

[murph]

8 wickets Thursday, 15 wickets on Friday then, suddenly, 6 wickets again on Saturday. What happened on Friday night that didn't happen on Thursday night?

[Russ]

Warne's record in Australia isn't that great anyway. 319 wickets at 26.39. Over the course of Warne's career, no less than eight Australian bowlers had better records at home (with a minimum of 20 wickets): Clark, Miller, McGrath, Hughes, Fleming, Gillespie, McDermott and MacGill (just).

It is just a bizarre claim to make that Warne had favourable pitches. Pretty much every complaint about Australian pitch doctoring for the past 20 years has been the exact opposite: that we've produced bouncy decks that suit Australian batting and pace bowling (and that they've scheduled Perth and Brisbane early to take the series lead).

[The Don has risen]

Pitch doctoring.
I remember Sydney ALWAYS spinning against the windies but it didn't against India. Funny that.

Aussie pitches are a disgrace. There are NO first day pitches thanks to Channel 9. Swing is limited because of this.

the Oval wasn't doctored otherwise the Poms would have chosen a bowler for the circumstances.
Is someone trying to tell us Stuart Broad took wickets because of the pitch.

We lost because we were not good enough.

some of us were worried about this at the start.

do not whinge about losing

[Adsy]

This has been noted here before Don... the Poms needed a result wicket and instead of opting for a greentop that would have suited Australia down to the ground ala Leeds, they went slow and dry (aka the exact opposite)

Win the toss, win the game.

We lost the toss. We lost the Ashes.

[The Don has risen]

no We didn't lose because we lost the toss we lost because we could not bat in the first innings.

I am still waiting to understand how Stuart Broad was a made for bowler on the pitch.
Stop whinging fellas.

you were wrong. perhaps less patriotism next time and more clear thinking wil help.

[Tony]

Donnie baby, there's no mutual exclusivity. We lost the toss AND the pitch was doctored AND we batted badly.

You say whinge, I say tomato.

[The Don has risen]

then how did Broad take the wickets?

how was it doctored that he gained from it.

a Dry and dusty wicket is not a doctored wicket.Next you will say a greentop is a doctored wicket

A doctored wicket is like in 1956 where it is made for two good spinners or in 1972 when it was done for Underwood.

This did not happen.

We lost because we just were not good enough.

Get over it

[Tony]

Broad? Because he bowled well. (In, I might add, the shadows of another rain delay.)

How? It was dried out too soon.

A dry and dusty wicket certainly IS a doctored wicket. Especially when it has been a great batting wicket all summer.

Next I will say: a green-top IS a doctored wicket in the middle of a dry summer in Perth.

We lost because England won.

You say get over it, I say potato.

[os]

What I heard Warnie say was that the pitch was doctored, but not doctored to favour England - otherwise they'd have picked two spinners, and they weren't to know that Australia wouldn't pick even one.
It was doctored to produce a result, which isn't bad of itself, but the nature of the doctoring was unethical because it gave too great an advantage to the side which won the toss and batted first.
A pitch like this is good on the first day, terrible the next day, then flattens out.
Even so, Broad did bowl better than our boys. Aim for the top of off, you miss, I hit.

[dave]

Don't forget - it rained just before lunch on Day 2: the covers came out. Conventional wisdom is that a bit of rain favours the batting team because the ball gets slippery, but with towels and slower over rates the ball is always dry to bowl with and the lightning fast outfield slows down. Covers on the pitch cause it to sweat a bit - and there's some cloud around. All of a sudden we've gone from an admittedly streaky 0/80 to 5 for not many more. Coincidence? Rain breaks have given us all sorts of grief in recent years ...

[Throbber]

According to the Poms the Aussies are the sledging world champions and that is why they have spent 20 years winning everything too. Blah Blah. Scyld Berry is a tool, always has been, always will be.